Is a Slow Housing Market the Best Time to Build Referrals?

The short answer: Yes. When rates are high and fewer people move, your past customers and referral partners are still there, and your team has time to nurture them. Landon Taylor, CEO of Snoball, calls a tempered market the best time to harvest referrals. The engine you build now keeps paying off when volume returns, working alongside paid ads, not instead of them.

Key Takeaways

• Slow markets test your foundation: When fewer people move, companies with warm relationships feel the dip least.
• Harvest what you already built: Happy customers and loyal partners are an asset you have already paid for.
• Short term and long term: Paid ads are the short-term play and referrals are the long-term play. You need both.
• Judge them differently: Referral channels should not sit under the same weekly scrutiny as paid media.
• The engine compounds: What you establish in a slow stretch catalyzes growth as the market picks back up.

This year has felt strange for a lot of movers. Talking with Landon Taylor on Movified Mondays, host Mark Hirschi described talking with moving companies in Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Toronto, and hearing the same thing from pockets of the US. Some markets could not be busier in July. Others felt oddly quiet, with houses sitting on the market.

The instinct in a quiet market is to panic and buy. Mark put it bluntly: owners start to “pump tons of money into Meta ads” and chase cold leads “instead of actually building the warm pipelines.” Landon’s answer was that the slowdown is the opportunity.

Why does the market feel slower right now?

Because rates are still high and fewer people are buying and selling homes. “Rates are still high. That’s... kind of a... tempered market. People aren’t buying and selling as much,” Landon said.

The numbers back up the feeling. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 11.8% of people moved in 2024, down from 12.1% in 2023. That looks like a small change on paper. Spread across a local market, it means fewer jobs for every moving company in town to split.

Why is a slower market the best time to build referrals?

Because you are harvesting work you have already done. Every great move you completed created a customer who might refer a friend, and every realtor or storage manager you served well is a potential partner.

Slow weeks also give you something busy season never does: time. Your office can actually call past customers. Your sales lead can sit down with partners instead of squeezing in a text between estimates. Relationships take several touch points to mature, so starting them in spring means you are already late. It is the same logic behind a solid off-season plan to fill spring: plant now, book later.

Landon also tied referrals to visibility. He called “this foundational layer of getting referrals, reviews to build your reputation so you do show up in the search” exactly that, foundational. “And a great time to build a foundation is when things may be a little bit slower.”

Should you cut paid ads and go all in on referrals?

No. Landon was clear that this is not a choice between the two. “It’s a short-term play versus a long-term play, and it’s not an either/or thing, right? I think they should be complementary to each other.”

Paid ads fill this month’s calendar. Referrals build next year’s. The catch is that paid is getting more expensive. The 2026 Home Services Customer Acquisition Outlook from Modernize reports home services paid search cost per lead up 10.5% year over year, and it recommends improving follow-up and close rates and managing to revenue, not cost per lead alone. For the fuller math, look at how a referral program compares to paid ads on cost and close rate.

How should you measure referrals differently than ads?

On a longer clock and on booked revenue. Landon described the skill as “having the ability to oscillate between how you view both and not putting them both under the same... scrutiny.”

Paid media earns a weekly scorecard: cost per lead, cost per booked job, return on spend. Referrals earn a quarterly one: booking rate, repeat referrers, and revenue from referred customers. Across 300+ moving companies on Snoball, referrals book at a rate of 40% or more. That is why referrals belong near the top when you rank lead sources by what actually books, even if they take longer to start flowing.

What does a referral engine look like when it works?

It turns past customers into a steady source of warm, pre-sold jobs. New City Moving generated 90+ referrals and booked 30 moves in its first month with Snoball, a 41% conversion rate. One customer alone sent 13+ referrals.

That last number is the real lesson. A single happy customer with a big network can open more doors than a month of cold clicks. You only find those people by asking, following up, and staying in touch.

What should you do this month?

• Pull your list: Export every completed move from the last two years and flag the customers who left great feedback.
• Call your partners: Reach your top 20 realtors, property managers, and storage facilities with something useful, not just a pitch.
• Keep ads running: Hold paid spend steady, but give it its own scorecard.
• Set a 90-day referral goal: Measure it in booked moves and revenue, not messages or clicks.

Slow markets do not last forever. The relationships you build during them do, and they will be working for you when the phones start ringing again.